Hosted by the gas company Gasum and IndustryHack, a total of 40 industrial internet experts were selected for the HackTheGas hackathon to come up with new digital innovations for the development of customer-oriented services. The first prize went to Team Nortal for the development of an app that makes gas vehicle use and payments at filling stations easier.

The winning team at HackTheGas, Nortal, developed a solution called Filling it Up that can be launched immediately by Gasum. The application makes it easier for gas vehicle users to monitor and optimize their gas consumption, reduce their carbon footprint and find the nearest gas filling station while on the road. The winning team received a prize of €2,000.

”Nortal’s solution was highly advanced and is bound to help increase the use of gas as a vehicle fuel as station and consumption data can now be used to benefit smartphone and smartwatch users. This will also create a nice bit of wow effect for gas vehicle use,” says Sari Siitonen, Gasum Vice President for Sustainability and Innovations.

Rated as the second-best hack at the event was the application produced by Optotron for gas pipeline visualization and safety promotion, while the third place went to PG Team for their idea related to 3D visualization. In addition to the winning team, Gasum will also continue negotiations with a few other teams for potential cooperation.

”As someone used to the slowly developing energy sector it was absolutely amazing to see how much can be achieved with digitalization in less than two days. The teams had really scrutinized the data and came up with many excellent ideas ranging from making it easier to fill up a gas-fueled vehicle and optimizing compressor runs to mobile applications for maintenance and service job allocation, carbon footprint monitoring for those who cook with gas and smoother utilization of control room alert data,” says Sari Siitonen from Gasum.

”This hackathon was the first ever event related directly to the energy infrastructure. The teams were hugely innovative and excelled in creating concrete demos about their ideas. They utilized new technologies such as smartglasses, sensors, tablets, smartwatches and buttons as well as the gas data provided by Gasum. The event was a major success and there was a great spirit of doing stuff together, says Mikael Hautala, Co-founder of IndustryHack.

”The open innovation approach where small and large companies get together to employ agile methods is the only way to get Finland out of the current situation faced by our country and many of our industries. The culture of speedy piloting provides enterprises with access to minimum viable products that can be used to develop their operations and services, says Pekka Sivonen, Co-founder and Head Coach of IndustryHack.